Bank’s patrons look for answers
Posted on Sunday, May 11, 2008
FAYETTEVILLE — Owners of small local businesses knocked on the locked doors of ANB Financial branches Saturday morning looking for answers — and access — to their money.
Greg and Heidi Drew, owners of Greg’s Moving Service in Fayetteville, were worried if their debit cards wouldn’t be accepted while moving a customer to South Carolina this weekend.
“I deposited $ 6, 000 in that bank [Friday ],” Greg Drew said outside ANB Financial’s Mission Avenue branch.
The couple was surprised by the news Friday afternoon that the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency had shut down the Rogers-based bank and appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. as receiver.
With $ 2 billion in assets, ANB Financial was the second-largest bank in Northwest Arkansas, behind Arvest Bank. ANB Financial lost $ 81 million last year.
The Office of the Comptroller states in a news release Friday that it closed the bank because it was likely “to incur losses that will deplete all or substantially all of its capital.” On Friday, employees of the Comptroller’s Office and the FDIC ordered the doors closed to the banks’ nine Northwest Arkansas branches and lending offices in Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. The branches will reopen Monday as Little Rockbased Pulaski Bank & Trust Co. locations.
Depositors of ANB Financial automatically will become depositors of Pulaski Bank, which is a subsidiary of Iberiabank Corp. of Lafayette, La.
“They said they were hoping for a grace period on our debit cards Monday,” Heidi Drew said Saturday. “But we will be on the road by then,” referring to her and her husband’s hauling assignment.
All deposit customers may access their insured money by writing checks or by using their debit or ATM cards, the FDIC said. Checks drawn on the bank that did not clear before Friday will be honored up to the insured limit, the FDIC states in a news release.
Zac Wooden, owner of Roger’s Rec Room at 406 W. Dickson St. in Fayetteville, knocked at the Mission Avenue branch doors and talked briefly with someone inside the bank on Saturday.
“They told me they were closed,” Wooden said. “I’ll be back here on Monday.” Wooden declined comment when asked about the bank being shut down.
Tim Spain of Fayetteville has accounts with ANB Financial because his employer, Smith Tile & Carpet, does business with the bank.
“It just made sense to have an account there, too,” Spain said after leaving the drive-through window.
Spain said he didn’t know anything about Pulaski Bank & Trust and was unsure if he would continue to have an account with the new bank.
“It really shakes your confidence in the financial situation of the country. I’m sure going to think it over this weekend,” he said. More than half of ANB’s loan portfolio was more than 30 days past due on March 31. Of that amount, 36 percent was considered uncollectable. In December, ANB’s percentage of loans that were more than 30 days past due was 25 percent, 10 times the average of banks nationally that are the size of ANB. ANB was chartered in 1994 as Arkansas National Bank with $ 5 million in assets.
To contact this reporter: sroberts@arkansasonline. com
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